Marlon Brando

final year (1943), he was put on probation for being insubordinate to a visiting army colonel during maneuvers. He was confined to his room, but sneaked into town and was caught. The faculty voted to expel him, though he was supported by the students, who thought expulsion was too harsh. He was invited back for the following year, but decided instead to drop out of high school.[14] Brando worked as a ditch-digger as a summer job arranged by his father. He tried to enlist in the Army, but his induction physical revealed that a football injury he had sustained at Shattuck had left him with a trick knee. He was classified as a 4-F, and not inducted.[7]

New York and acting

Brando decided to follow his sisters to New York, studying at the American Theatre Wing Professional School, part of the Dramatic Workshop of the [15]

Brando was an avid student and proponent of Stella Adler, from whom he learned the techniques of the Stanislavski System. This technique encouraged the actor to explore his own feelings and past experiences to fully realize the character being portrayed. Brando's remarkable insight and sense of realism was evident early on. Adler used to recount that when teaching Brando, she had instructed the class to act like chickens, and added that a nuclear bomb was about to fall on them. Most of the class clucked and ran around wildly, but Brando sat calmly and pretended to lay an egg. Asked by Adler why he had chosen to react this way, he said, "I'm a chicken—What do I know about bombs?"[16] Despite being commonly regarded as a Method actor, Brando disagreed. He claimed to have abhorred Lee Strasberg's teachings:

"After I had some success, Lee Strasberg tried to take credit for teaching me how to act. He never taught me anything. He would have claimed credit for the sun and the moon if he believed he could get away with it. He was an ambitious, selfish man who exploited the people who attended the Actors Studio and tried to project himself as an acting oracle and guru. Some people worshipped him, but I never knew why. I sometimes went to the Actors Studio on Saturday mornings because Elia Kazan was teaching, and there were usually a lot of good-looking girls, but Strasberg never taught me acting. Stella did – and later Kazan."[17]

Early career

Brando used his Stanislavski System skills for his first summer-stock roles in Sayville, New York, on Long Island. His behavior had him kicked out of the cast of the New School's production in Sayville, but he was discovered in a locally produced play there after which he made it to Broadway in the bittersweet drama I Remember Mama in 1944. In A&E's Biography Patricia Bosworth observes, "Actors emoted in those days. They were very phoney and extravagant and very theatrical and he was very quiet and realistic and he mumbled and ... this was new. Totally new." Critics voted him "Broadway's Most Promising Actor" for his role as an anguished veteran in Truckline Café, although the play was a commercial failure. In 1946, he appeared on Broadway as the young hero in the political drama A Flag is Born, refusing to accept wages above the Actor's Equity rate.[18][19] In that same year, Brando played the role of Marchbanks with Katharine Cornell in her production's revival of Candida, one of her signature roles.[20] Cornell also cast him as The Messenger in her production of Jean Anouilh's Antigone that same year.

Brando achieved stardom as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams's 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Elia Kazan. Brando sought out that role,[21] driving up to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Williams was spending the summer, to audition for the part. In a letter dated August 29, 1947, Williams confided to his agent Audrey Wood: "It had not occurred to me before what an excellent value would come through casting a very young actor in this part. It humanizes the character of Stanley in that it becomes the brutality and callousness of youth rather than a vicious old man ... A new value came out of Brando's reading which was by far the best reading I have ever heard." Brando based his portrayal of Kowalski on the boxer Rocky Graziano, whom he had studied at a local gymnasium. Graziano did not know who Brando was, but attended the production with tickets provided by the young man. He said, "The curtain went up and on the stage is that son of a bitch from the gym, and he's playing me."[22]

In 1947, Brando did a screen test for an early Warner Brothers script for the novel, Rebel Without a Cause (1944), which bore no relation to the film eventually produced in 1955.[23] The screen test is included as an extra in the 2006 DVD release of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Brando's first screen role was the bitter paraplegic veteran in The Men (1950). He spent a month in bed at the Birmingham Army Hospital in Van Nuys to prepare for the role. The New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther wrote that Brando as Ken "is so vividly real, dynamic and sensitive that his illusion is complete" and noted "Out of stiff and frozen silences he can lash into a passionate rage with the tearful and flailing frenzy of a taut cable suddenly cut."

By Brando's own account, it may have been because of this film that his draft status was changed from 4-F to 1-A. He had had surgery on his trick knee, and it was no longer physically debilitating enough to incur exclusion from the draft. When Brando reported to the induction center, he answered a questionnaire by saying his race was "human", his color was "Seasonal-oyster white to beige", and he told an Army doctor that he was psycho neurotic. When the draft board referred him to a psychiatrist, Brando explained that he had been expelled from military school and had severe problems with authority. Coincidentally, the psychiatrist knew a doctor friend of Brando. Brando avoided military service during the Korean War.[7]

"If you don't know what the words are but you have a general idea of what they are, then you look at the cue card and it gives you the feeling to the viewer, hopefully, that the person is really searching for what he is going to say -- that he doesn't know what to say."

—Brando explaining his use of cue cards on the TV documentary, The Making of Superman: The Movie

Early in his career, Brando began using cue cards instead of memorizing his lines. Despite the objections of several of the film directors he worked with, Brando felt that this helped bring realism and spontaneity to his performances. He felt otherwise he would appear to be reciting a writer's speech.[24][25]

Rise to fame

Brando brought his performance as Stanley Kowalski to the screen in Kazan's adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). The role remains one of his most iconic and imitated. The critical reception of Brando's performance was so overwhelmingly positive that Brando quickly became the main male sex symbol in Hollywood. Brando's animal magnetism and raw power, best evident in the scene where he stands on the street and yells "Stella!", was so convincing to audiences that years later Brando stated, "Even today I meet people who think of me automatically as a tough, insensitive, coarse guy named Stanley Kowalski. They can't help it, but, it is troubling." The role earned Brando his first Academy Award nomination in the Best Actor category.

He was also nominated the next year for Viva Zapata! (1952), a fictionalized account of the life of Emiliano Zapata, Mexican Revolutionary. It recounted his peasant upbringing, his rise to power in the early 1900s, and death. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and co-starred Anthony Quinn. In the biopic, Marlon Brando: The Wild One, Sam Shaw says, "Secretly, before the picture started, he went to Mexico to the very town where Zapata lived and was born in and it was there that he studied the speech patterns of people, their behavior, movement." Most critics focused on the actor rather than the film, with Time and Newsweek publishing rave reviews.

Years later in his autobiography, Brando remarked: "Tony Quinn, whom I admired professionally and liked personally, played my brother, but he was extremely cold to me while we shot that picture. During our scenes together, I sensed a bitterness toward me, and if I suggested a drink after work, he either turned me down or else was sullen and said little. Only years later did I learn why." Brando related that, to create on-screen tension between the two, "Gadg" (Kazan) had told Quinn—who had taken over the role of Stanley Kowalski on Broadway after Brando had finished—that Brando had been unimpressed with his work. After achieving the desired effect, Kazan never told Quinn that he had misled him. It was only many years later, after comparing notes, that Brando and Quinn realized the deception.

Brando stunned critics when he appeared in Julius Caesar (1953) as Mark Antony. While acknowledging Brando's talent, some critics felt Brando's "mumbling" and other idiosyncrasies betrayed a lack of acting fundamentals and, when his casting was announced, many remained dubious about his prospects for success. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and co-starring British stage actor John Gielgud, Brando delivered an impressive performance, especially during Antony's noted "Friends, Romans, countrymen ..." speech. Gielgud was so impressed that he offered Brando a full season at the Hammersmith Theatre, an offer he declined. In his biography on the actor, Stefan Kanfer writes, "Marlon's autobiography devotes one line to his work on that film: Among all those British professionals, 'for me to walk onto a movie set and play Mark Anthony was asinine'—yet another example of his persistent self-denigration, and wholly incorrect." Kanfer adds that after a screening of the film, director John Huston commented, "Christ! It was like a furnace door opening—the heat came off the screen. I don't know another actor who could do that." During the filming of Julius Caesar, Brando learned that Elia Kazan had cooperated with congressional investigators, naming a whole string of "subversives" to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. By all accounts, Brando was upset by his mentor's decision, but he worked with him again in On The Waterfront. "None of us are [sic "is"] perfect," he later wrote in his memoir, "and I think that Gadg has done injury to others, but mostly to himself."

In 1953, Brando also starred in The Wild One, riding his own Triumph Thunderbird 6T motorcycle. Triumph's importers were ambivalent at the exposure, as the subject matter was rowdy motorcycle gangs taking over a small town. The film was criticized for its perceived gratuitous violence at the time, with Time stating, "The effect of the movie is not to throw light on the public problem, but to shoot adrenaline through the moviegoer's veins." Brando allegedly did not see eye to eye with the Hungarian director Lazlo Benedek and did not get on with costar Lee Marvin. The film may have been Brando's first cinematic failure but the images of Brando posing with his Triumph motorcycle became iconic, and are the basis of his wax figure at Madame Tussauds. The film also contains one of the most famous exchanges of the era: when a lady asks Brando's character Johnny, "What are you rebelling against?" and Johnny replies, "Whaddya got?"

To Brando's expressed puzzlement, the movie inspired teen rebellion and made him an icon to the nascent rock-and-roll generation and future stars such as James Dean and Elvis Presley. After the movie's release, the sales of leather jackets and blue jeans skyrocketed. Reflecting on the movie in his autobiography, Brando concluded that it had not aged very well but said:

"More than most parts I've played in the movies or onstage, I related to Johnny, and because of this, I believe I played him as more sensitive and sympathetic than the script envisioned. There's a line in the picture where he snarls, 'Nobody tells me what to do.' That's exactly how I've felt all my life."

Later that same year, Brando starred in Arms and the Man in Boston. Falk was proud to tell people that Brando turned down an offer of $10,000 per week on Broadway, in favor of working in his production in Boston, for less than $500 per week. It was the last time Brando acted in a stage play.

On the Waterfront

In 1954, Brando starred in On the Waterfront, a crime drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg; it also stars Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger and, in her film debut, Eva Marie Saint. When initially offered the role, Brando – still stung by Kazan's testimony at the HUAC – demurred and the part of Terry Malloy nearly went to Frank Sinatra. According to biographer Stefan Kanfer, the director believed that Sinatra, who grew up in Hoboken, would work as Malloy, but eventually producer Sam Spiegel wooed Brando to the part, signing him for $100,000. "Kazan made no protest because, he subsequently confessed, 'I always preferred Brando to anybody.'"[26]

Brando won the Oscar for his role as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront. His performance, spurred on by his rapport with Eva Marie Saint and Kazan's direction, is universally praised as a tour de force. For the famous I coulda' been a contender scene, he convinced Kazan that the scripted scene was unrealistic. Schulberg's script had Brando acting the entire scene with his character being held at gunpoint by his brother Charlie, played by Rod Steiger. Brando insisted on gently pushing away the gun, saying that Terry would never believe that his brother would pull the trigger and doubting that he could continue his speech while fearing a gun on him. Kazan let Brando improvise and later expressed deep admiration for Brando's instinctive understanding, saying:

"...what was extraordinary about his performance, I feel, is the contrast of the tough-guy front and the extreme delicacy and gentle cast of his behavior. What other actor, when his brother draws a pistol to force him to do something shameful, would put his hand on the gun and push it away with the gentleness of a caress? Who else could read 'Oh, Charley!' in a tone of reproach that is so loving and so melancholy and suggests the terrific depth of pain? ... If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film in America, I don't know what it is."[27]

Upon its release, On the Waterfront received euphoric reviews from critics and was a commercial success, earning an estimated $4.2 million in rentals at the North American box office in 1954.[28] In his July 29, 1954, review, The New York Times critic A. H. Weiler hailed the film as a masterpiece, calling it "an uncommonly powerful, exciting, and imaginative use of the screen by gifted professionals."[29] Film critic Roger Ebert lauded the film, stating that Brando and Kazan changed acting in American films forever and added it to his "Great Movies" list.[30] In his autobiography, Brando was typically dismissive of his performance: "On the day Gadg showed me the complete picture, I was so depressed by my performance I got up and left the screening room ... I thought I was a huge failure." After Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor, the statue was stolen. Much later, it turned up at a London auction house, which contacted the actor and informed him of its whereabouts.

Box office superstardom: 1954–1959

Brando's first six films – The Men, A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata!, Julius Caesar, The Wild One and On the Waterfront – laid a foundation of authenticity and influence that would sustain him throughout his career and establish a new standard that other actors—and Brando himself—would have difficulty attaining. As the decade continued, Brando remained a top box office draw but some critics felt his performances lacked the intensity and commitment found in his earlier work, especially with Kazan. He portrayed Merle Oberon."

Brando and Simmons were paired together again in the MGM film adaptation of the musical Guys and Dolls (1955). Guys and Dolls would be Brando's first and last musical role. Time found the picture "false to the original in its feeling", remarking that Brando "sings in a faraway tenor that sometimes tends to be flat." Appearing in Edward Murrow's Person to Person interview in early 1955, he admitted to having problems with his singing voice, which he called "pretty terrible." In the 1965 documentary "Meet Marlon Brando" he revealed that the final product heard in the movie was a result of countless singing takes being cut into one and later joked, "I couldn't hit a note with a baseball bat; some notes I missed by extraordinary margins ... They sewed my words together on one song so tightly that when I mouthed it in front of the camera, I nearly asphyxiated myself". Relations between Brando and Sinatra were also frosty, with Stefan Kanfer observing, "The two men were diametrical opposites: Marlon required multiple takes; Frank detested repeating himself." Upon their first meeting Sinatra reportedly scoffed, "Don't give me any of that Actors Studio shit." Brando later famously quipped, "Frank is the kind of guy, when he dies, he's going to heaven and give God a hard time for making him bald." The film was a smash, however, costing $5.5 million to make and grossing $13 million.

Brando played Sakini, a Japanese interpreter for the U.S. Army in postwar

In 1958, Brando appeared in The Young Lions, dyeing his hair blonde and assuming a German accent for the role, which he later admitted was not convincing. The film was based on the novel by Irwin Shaw and Brando's portrayal of the character Christian Diestl was daring and controversial for its time. He later wrote, "The original script closely followed the book, in which Shaw painted all Germans as evil caricatures, especially Christian, whom he portrayed as a symbol of everything that was bad about Nazism; he was mean, nasty, vicious, a cliché of evil ... I thought the story should demonstrate that there are no inherently "bad" people in the world, but they can easily be misled." Shaw and Brando even appeared together for a televised interview with CBS correspondent David Schoenbrun and, during a bombastic exchange, Shaw charged that, like most actors, Brando was incapable of playing flat-out villainy; Brando responded by stating "Nobody creates a character but an actor. I play the role; now he exists. He is my creation." The Young Lions also features Brando's only appearance in a film with friend and rival Montgomery Clift. Brando closed out the decade by appearing in The Fugitive Kind opposite Anna Magnani. The film was based on another play by Tennessee Williams but was hardly the success A Streetcar Named Desire had been, with the Los Angeles Times labeling Williams's personae "psychologically sick or just plain ugly" and The New Yorker calling it a "cornpone melodrama".

One-Eyed Jacks and Mutiny on the Bounty

In 1962, Brando made his directorial debut in the western One-Eyed Jacks. The picture was originally planned to be directed by Stanley Kubrick from a screenplay by Sam Peckinpah, but studio disputes led to their replacement by Brando and Guy Trosper. Brando portrays the lead character Rio, and Karl Malden plays his partner "Dad" Longworth. The supporting cast features Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson, and Slim Pickens. Brando's penchant for multiple retakes and character exploration as an actor carried over into his directing, however, and the film soon went over budget; Paramount expected the film to take three months to complete but shooting stretched to six and the cost doubled to more than six million dollars. Brando's inexperience as an editor also delayed postproduction and Paramount eventually took control of the film. Brando later wrote, "Paramount said it didn't like my version of the story; I'd had everyone lie except Karl Malden. The studio cut the movie to pieces and made him a liar, too. By then, I was bored with the whole project and walked away from it." Although Brando always spoke of the experience with offhand indifference, many feel this was a turning point for him in how he regarded the movie business, where his previous contempt turned corrosive; not long after the film came out he was famously quoted, "Any pretension I've sometimes had of being an artistic is now just a long, chilly hope." Visually stunning, One-Eyed Jacks received mixed reviews from critics. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, favorably influenced by Brando's efforts, claimed the film to be "directed and played with the kind of vicious style that Mr. Brando has put into so many of his skulking, scabrous roles. Realism is redolent in them, as it is in many details of the film. But, at the same time, it is curiously surrounded by elements of creamed-cliché romance and a kind of pictorial extravagance that you usually see in South Sea island films." Variety wrote: "It is an oddity of this film that both its strength and its weakness lie in the area of characterization. Brando's concept calls, above all, for depth of character, for human figures endowed with overlapping good and bad sides to their nature." The passing of time has improved the film's standing, with Stefan Kanfer noting, "In later years, much too late for the studio bottom liners, Jacks became a cult film, deservedly admired by fans of retro Westerns like Red River and The Searchers." Brando biographer Peter Manso concurs, stating to A&E, "This is a marvelous film filled with very interesting things. It really tells you that Marlon had a great eye, a great visual sense." Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 50% critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 6.2/10.

Brando's revulsion with the film industry reportedly boiled over on the set of his next film, MGM's remake of Mutiny on the Bounty, which was filmed in Tahiti. The actor was accused of deliberately sabotaging nearly every aspect of the epic production. On June 16, 1962, The Saturday Evening Post ran an article by Bill Davidson with the headline SIX MILLION DOLLARS DOWN THE DRAIN: THE MUTINY OF MARLON BRANDO. Mutiny director Lewis Milestone claimed that the executives "deserve what they get when they give a ham actor, a petulant child, complete control over an expensive picture." Brando later wrote, "Once filming started, the studio realized it had underestimated the cost of shooting a picture in French Polynesia, and then it fired the director, Carol Reed, causing further delays and added expense. Dishonestly, MGM portrayed me as the source of the delays. It wasn't true, but reporters in the entertainment press, who didn't like me for refusing to give interviews ... accepted what MGM's press agents said; it fit their preconceived notion of an eccentric, cantankerous Brando, and quickly the distortions were carved in granite." Regardless, Mutiny on the Bounty nearly capsized MGM and, while the project had indeed been hampered with delays other than Brando's behavior, the accusations would dog the actor for years as studios began to fear Brando's difficult reputation. Critics also began taking note of Marlon's fluctuating weight.

Box office decline: 1963–1971

Distracted by divorce, public custody battles, and a growing interest in the civil rights movement, Brando began to view acting as a means to an end financially and started accepting roles in films that many critics and fans alike perceived as being beneath his talent. Having bucked the system for years by only signing short term deals with movie studios, in 1961 Brando uncharacteristically signed a five picture deal with Universal Studios that would haunt him for the rest of the decade. The Ugly American (1963) was the first of these films. Based on the 1958 novel of the same name that Pennebaker had optioned, the movie featured Brando's sister Jocelyn but died at the box office in the face of stiff competition, including From Russia with Love and Cleopatra. Brando was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance. All of Brando's other Universal films during this period, including Bedtime Story (1964), The Appaloosa (1966), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) and The Night of the Following Day (1969), also flopped. Countess in particular was a disappointment for Brando, who had looked forward to working with one of his heroes, director Charlie Chaplin. The experience turned out to be an unhappy one; Brando had no chemistry with his leading lady Sophia Loren and was horrified at Chaplin's didactic style of direction and his authoritarian approach. In his autobiography, Brando called Chaplin "probably the most sadistic man I've ever met." Brando had also appeared in the spy thriller Morituri in 1965; that, too, failed to find an audience.

Brando acknowledged his lack of motivation during this time, writing later, "Some of the films I made during the sixties were successful; some weren't. Some, like The Night of the Following Day, I made only for the money; others, like Candy, I did because a friend asked me to and I didn't want to turn him down ... In some ways I think of my middle age as the Fuck You Years." Candy was especially appalling for many; a 1968 sex farce film directed by Christian Marquand and based on the 1958 novel by Terry Southern, the movie satirizes pornographic stories through the adventures of its naive heroine, Candy, played by Ewa Aulin. It is generally regarded as the nadir of Brando's down period. Critics and champions of the actor had been lamenting his seeming lack of interest for years; The Washington Post observed: "Brando's self-indulgence over a dozen years is costing him and his public his talents." In the March 1966 issue of The Atlantic, Pauline Kael wrote that in his rebellious days, Marlon "was antisocial because he knew society was crap; he was a hero to youth because he was strong enough not to take the crap" but now Brando and others like him had become "buffoons, shamelessly, pathetically mocking their public reputations." In an earlier review of The Appaloosa in 1966, Kael wrote that the actor was "trapped in another dog of a movie ... Not for the first time, Mr. Brando gives us a heavy-lidded, adenoidally openmouthed caricature of the inarticulate, stalwart loner."

While Brando had lost much of his box office appeal in the 1960s, he was still capable of a riveting performance when the right role engaged his interest. In what might be the most overlooked performance of his career, Brando portrayed a repressed gay army officer in Reflections in a Golden Eye. Directed by John Huston and costarring Elizabeth Taylor, the character seemed to reignite the actor's passion and he turned out one of the most intense performances in years, with Stanley Crouch marveling, "Brando's main achievement was to portray the taciturn but stoic gloom of those pulverized by circumstances."[31] Brando's acting (and Taylor's) was fearless but the subject matter was far, far ahead of its time for mainstream audiences and the film was a not a commercial success. Another notable film was The Chase (1966), which paired the actor with Arthur Penn and a new generation of actors who had admired his work, such as Robert Duvall, Jane Fonda and Robert Redford. The film deals with themes of racism, sexual revolution, small-town corruption, and vigilantism but is probably best remembered for a scene in which the sheriff played by Brando is brutally beaten by three of the vigilantes.

Brando always cited Burn! (1970) as his personal favorite of the films he had made, writing in his autobiography, "I think I did some of the best acting I've ever done in that picture, but few people came to see it." Always reticent to discuss acting in interviews and often dismissive of his own lauded performances, Brando dedicated a full chapter to the film in his memoir, stating that the director, Gillo Pontecorvo, was the best director he had ever worked with next to Kazan and Bernardo Bertolucci. Brando also detailed his clashes with Pontecorvo on the set and how "we nearly killed each other." Loosely based on events in the history of Guadeloupe, the film got a hostile reception from critics despite a committed performance from its star and quietly went away. In 1971, Michael Winner directed him in the British horror film The Nightcomers with Stephanie Beacham, Thora Hird, Harry Andrews and Anna Palk. It is a prequel to The Turn of the Screw, which later became the 1961 film The Innocents. Brando's performance earned him a nomination for a Best Actor BAFTA but the film bombed at the box office.

The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris

By the dawn of the seventies, Brando was considered "unbankable".[32] He had not appeared in a hit movie since The Young Lions in 1958, the last year he had ranked as one of the Top Ten Box Office Stars,[33] which was also the year of his last Academy Award nomination, for Sayonara. Brando's performance as Vito Corleone, the "Don" in Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's 1969 best-selling novel The Godfather was a mid-career turning point, putting him back in the Top Ten and winning him his second Best Actor Oscar.

Paramount production chief Robert Evans, who had given Mario Puzo an advance to write The Godfather so that Paramount would own the movie rights,[34] hired Coppola after many major directors had turned the movie down because he wanted an Italian-American director who could provide the movie with cultural authenticity. Coppola also came cheap. Evans, who was Jewish, was conscious of the fact that Paramount's last Mafia movie, The Brotherhood (1968) had been a box office bomb, and he believed it was partly due to the fact that the director, Martin Ritt, and the star, Kirk Douglas, were Jews and the film lacked an authentic Italian flavor.[35] The studio originally intended the movie to be a low-budget production set in contemporary times without any major actors, but the phenomenal success of the novel gave Evans the clout to turn The Godfather into a prestige picture.

Coppola had developed a list of actors for all the roles, and his list of potential Dons included the Oscar-winning Italian-American [36] the Italian-American Frank de Kova (best known for playing Chief Wild Eagle on the TV sit-com F-Troop), John Marley (a Best Supporting Oscar-nominee for Paramount's 1970 hit movie Love Story who was cast as the movie producer Woltz in the picture), the Italian-American Richard Conte (who was cast as Don Corleone's deadly rival Don Barzini), and Italian movie producer Carlo Ponti. Coppola admitted in a 1975 interview, "We finally figured we had to lure the best actor in the world. It was that simple. That boiled down to Laurence Olivier or Marlon Brando, who are the greatest actors in the world." The holographic copy of Coppola's cast list shows Brando's name underlined.[37] Evans told Coppola that he had been thinking of Brando for the part two years earlier, and Puzo had imagined Brando in the part when he wrote the novel and had actually written to him about the part,[38] so Coppola and Evans narrowed it down to Brando.[39] (Ironically, Olivier would compete with Brando for the Best Actor Oscar for his part in Sleuth. He bested Brando at the 1972 New York Film Critics Circle Awards.) Albert S. Ruddy, whom Paramount has assigned to producer, agreed with the choice of Brando. However, Paramount studio heads were opposed to casting Brando due to his reputation for difficulty and his long string of box office flops. Brando also had One-Eyed Jacks working against him, a troubled production that lost money for Paramount when it was released in 1961. Paramount Pictures President Stanley Jaffe told an exasperated Coppola, "As long as I'm president of this studio, Marlon Brando will not be in this picture, and I will no longer allow you to discuss it."[40] Jaffe eventually set three conditions for the casting of Brando: That he would have to take a fee far below what he typically received; he'd have to agree to accept financial responsibility for any production delays his behavior cost; and he had to submit to a screen test. In order to skirt the humiliation of having Brando submit to a screen test, Coppola convinced Brando to a videotaped "make-up" test, in which Brando did his own makeup (he used cotton balls to simulate the puffed-cheek look). Coppola had feared Brando might be too young to play the Don, but was electrified by the actor's characterization as the head of a crime family. Even so, he had to fight the studio in order to cast the temperamental actor. Brando had doubts himself, stating in his autobiography, "I had never played an Italian before, and I didn't think I could do it successfully." Eventually, Charles Bluhdorn, the president of Paramount parent Gulf+Western, was won over to letting Brando have the role; when he saw the screen test, he asked in amazement, "What are we watching? Who is this old guinea?" Brando was signed for a low fee of $50,000, but in his contract, he was given a percentage of the gross on a sliding scale: 1% of the gross for each $10 million over a $10 million threshold, up to 5% if the picture exceeded $60 million. According to Evans, Brando sold back his points in the picture for $100,000 as he was in dire need of funds. "That $100,000 cost him $11 million," Evans claimed.[41]

In a 1994 interview that can be found on the Academy of Achievement website, Coppola insisted, "The Godfather was a very unappreciated movie when we were making it. They were very unhappy with it. They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the way I was shooting it. I was always on the verge of getting fired." When word of this reached Brando, he threatened to walk off the picture, writing in his memoir, "I strongly believe that directors are entitled to independence and freedom to realize their vision, though Francis left the characterizations in our hands and we had to figure out what to do." In a 2010 television interview with Larry King, Al Pacino also talked about how Brando's support helped him keep the iconic role of Michael Corleone in the movie—despite the fact director Francis Ford Coppola wanted to sack him. Brando was on his best behaviour during filming and, buoyed by an impressive cast that included Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan and Diane Keaton. In the Vanity Fair article "The Godfather Wars" Mark Seals writes, "With the actors, as in the movie, Brando served as the head of the family. He broke the ice by toasting the group with a glass of wine. 'When we were young, Brando was like the godfather of actors,' says Robert Duvall. 'I used to meet with Dustin Hoffman in Cromwell's Drugstore, and if we mentioned his name once, we mentioned it 25 times in a day.' Caan adds, 'The first day we met Brando everybody was in awe.'"

Brando's performance got ecstatic praise from critics. "I thought it would be interesting to play a gangster, maybe for the first time in the movies, who wasn't like those bad guys Patton in 1970). He boycotted the award ceremony, instead sending American Indian Rights activist Sacheen Littlefeather, who appeared in full Apache attire, to state Brando's reasons, which were based on his objection to the depiction of American Indians by Hollywood and television.[42]

The actor followed The Godfather with Bernardo Bertolucci's 1972 film Last Tango in Paris opposite Maria Schneider, but Brando's highly praised performance threatened to be overshadowed by an uproar over the sexual content of the film. Brando portrays a recent American widower named Paul, who begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young, betrothed Parisian woman named Jeanne. As with previous films, Brando refused to memorize his lines for many scenes; instead, he wrote his lines on cue cards and posted them around the set for easy reference, leaving Bertolucci with the problem of keeping them out of the picture frame. The film features several intense, graphic scenes involving Brando, including Paul anally raping Jeanne using butter as a lubricant and Paul's angry, emotionally charged final confrontation with the corpse of his dead wife. The controversial movie was a hit, however, and Brando made the list of Top Ten Box Office Stars for the last time. The voting membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences again nominated Brando for Best Actor, his seventh nomination. Although Brando won the 1973 New York Film Critics Circle Awards, he lost the Oscar to Jack Lemmon, and the actor did not appear at the ceremony or send a representative to pick up the award if he won. Critic Pauline Kael, in her famous New Yorker review, wrote "The movie breakthrough has finally come. Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face of an art form." Brando confessed in his autobiography, "To this day I can't say what Last Tango In Paris was about" and added the film "required me to do a lot of emotional arm wrestling with myself, and when it was finished, I decided that I wasn't ever again going to destroy myself emotionally to make a movie. I felt I had violated my innermost self and I didn't want to suffer like that anymore ... You can't fake it."

In 1973, Brando suffered a great personal loss with the death of his childhood friend Wally Cox. Brando appeared unannounced at Cox's wake. As told by Patricia Bosworth to A&E, Marlon showed up and "climbed up a tree and looked down on everybody. He got the ashes away from Wally Cox's wife, the box of ashes, and they literally fought over the ashes ... He kept them first in his car and then by his bed ... Mrs. Cox was going to sue for the ashes but she finally said 'I think Marlon needs the ashes more than I do.'"

Late 1970s

In 1976, Brando appeared in The Missouri Breaks with his friend Jack Nicholson. The movie also reunited the actor with director Arthur Penn. Following The Godfather and Tango, Brando's performance was disappointing for some reviewers, who accused him of being erratic. As biographer Stefan Kanfer describes, Penn had difficulty controlling Brando, who seemed intent on going over the top with his border-ruffian-turned-contract-killer Robert E. Lee Clayton: "Marlon made him a cross-dressing psychopath. Absent for the first hour of the movie, Clayton enters on horseback, dangling upside down, caparisoned in white buckskin, Littlefeather-style. He speaks in an Irish accent for no apparent reason. Over the next hour, also for no apparent reason, Clayton assumes the intonation of a British upper-class twit and an elderly frontier woman, complete with a granny dress and matching bonnet. Penn, who believed in letting actors do their thing, indulged Marlon all the way." Critics were unkind, with The Observer calling Brando's performance "one of the most extravagant displays of grandedamerie since Sarah Bernhardt" while The Sun complained "Marlon Brando at fifty-two has the sloppy belly of a sixty-two-year-old, the white hair of a seventy-two-year-old, and the lack of discipline of a precocious twelve-year-old." With the passing of time, however, the performance has been reappraised as perhaps the last portrayal to feature Brando's improvisational magic, as Kanfer confirms: "Even though his late work was met with disapproval, a re-examination shows that often, in the middle of the most pedestrian scene, there would be a sudden, luminous occurrence, a flash of the old Marlon that showed how capable he remained."

In 1977, Brando made a rare appearance on television in the miniseries Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance. In 1978, he narrated the English version of Raoni, a French-Belgian documentary film directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and Luiz Carlos Saldanha that focused on the life of Raoni Metuktire and issues surrounding the survival of the indigenous Indian tribes of north central Brazil. Brando portrayed Superman's father Jor-El in the 1978 film Superman. He agreed to the role only on assurance that he would be paid a large sum for what amounted to a small part, that he would not have to read the script beforehand and his lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera. It was revealed in a documentary contained in the 2001 DVD release of Superman that he was paid $3.7 million for two weeks of work. Brando also filmed scenes for the movie's sequel, Superman II, but after producers refused to pay him the same percentage he received for the first movie, he denied them permission to use the footage. "I asked for my usual percentage," he recollected in his memoir, "but they refused, and so did I." However, after Brando's death, the footage was reincorporated into the 2006 re-cut of the film, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut and in the 2006 "loose sequel" Superman Returns, in which both used and unused archive footage of him as Jor-El from the first two Superman films was remastered for a scene in the Fortress of Solitude, and Brando's voice-overs were used throughout the film. As the decade wore on, Brando was criticized more and more for only accepting what amounted to cameos in exchange for huge paydays.

Brando starred as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now (1979). He plays a highly decorated U.S. Army Special Forces officer who goes renegade, running his own operation based in Cambodia and is feared by the U.S. military as much as the Vietnamese. Brando was paid $1 million a week for 3 weeks work. The film drew attention for its lengthy and troubled production, as Eleanor Coppola's documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse documents: Brando showed up on the set overweight, Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack, and severe weather destroyed several expensive sets. The film's release was also postponed several times while Coppola edited millions of feet of footage. In the documentary, Coppola talks about how astonished he was when an overweight Brando turned up for his scenes and, feeling desperate, decided to portray Kurtz, who appears emaciated in the original story, as a man who had indulged every aspect of himself. Coppola: "He was already heavy when I hired him and he promised me that he was going to get in shape and I imagined that I would, if he were heavy, I could use that. But he was so fat, he was very, very shy about it ... He was very, very adamant about how he didn't want to portray himself that way. " Brando admitted to Coppola that he had not read the book, Heart of Darkness, as the director had asked him to, and the pair spent days exploring the story and the character of Kurtz, much to the actor's financial benefit, according to producer Fred Roos: "The clock was ticking on this deal he had and we had to finish him within three weeks or we'd go into this very expensive overage ... And Francis and Marlon would be talking about the character and whole days would go by. And this is at Marlon's urging — and yet he's getting paid for it." In A&E's episode of Biography, co-star Martin Sheen remembers, "He and I and Francis were sitting on the set talking about this scene and Marlon had the pages of the script in his hands and he started to fold them and he get very involved in that as we were talking, and I couldn't take my eyes off him - I wondered what he was doing - and eventually he made a little hat out of the script and put it on his head!" In his autobiography, Brando made no bones about his motives: "I was good at bullshitting Francis and getting him to think my way, and he bought it, but what I'd really wanted from the beginning was to find a way to make my part smaller so that I wouldn't have to work so hard." Even so, the actor admitted the role enveloped him, especially a monologue at Kurtz's death: "It was probably the closest I've ever come to getting lost in a part, and one of the best scenes I've ever played because I really had to hold myself under control ... I was hysterical; I cried and laughed, and it was a wonderful scene. Francis shot it twice—two forty-five minute improvisations—but used hardly any of the footage in the picture."

Upon release, Apocalypse Now earned widespread critical acclaim and its cultural impact and philosophical themes have been extensively discussed since, as well as Brando's performance. Although it received mixed reviews at the time, the character has become iconic since, especially Marlon's whispering of Kurtz's final words "The horror! The horror!" Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, defended the movie's controversial denouement, opining that the ending, "with Brando's fuzzy, brooding monologues and final violence, feels more satisfactory than any conventional ending possibly could."

Later work

After appearing as oil tycoon Adam Steiffel in 1980's The Formula ("a stinker", according to the actor), Brando announced his retirement from acting. He returned in 1989 in A Dry White Season, based on André Brink's 1979 antiapartheid novel. Brando agreed to do the film for free, but fell out with director Euzhan Palcy over how the film was edited; he even made a rare television appearance in an interview with Connie Chung to voice his disapproval. In his memoir, he maintained that Palcy "had cut the picture so poorly, I thought, that the inherent drama of this conflict was vague at best." While many critics were stunned at his monumental size, Brando received praise for his performance, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and winning the Best Actor Award at the Tokyo Film Festival. Brando also scored enthusiastic reviews for his spoof of Vito Corleone as Carmine Sabatini in 1990's The Freshman. In his original review, Roger Ebert wrote, "There have been a lot of movies where stars have repeated the triumphs of their parts - but has any star ever done it more triumphantly than Marlon Brando does in The Freshman?" Variety also praised Brando's performance as Sabatini and noted, "Marlon Brando's sublime comedy performance elevates The Freshman from screwball comedy to a quirky niche in film history." Brando also starred alongside his friend Johnny Depp in the box office hit Don Juan DeMarco (1995) and in Depp's controversial The Brave (1997), which was never released in the United States. Some later performances, such as his appearance in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992). the unique portrayal in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), and his barely recognizable appearance in Free Money (1998), resulted in some of the most uncomplimentary reviews of his career. In his last film, The Score (2001), he starred with Robert De Niro, who played Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II. That film was a critical and box office success.

He conceived the idea of a novel called Fan-Tan with director Donald Cammell in 1979, which was not released until 2005.[43]

Final years and death

Brando's notoriety, his troubled family life, and his obesity attracted more attention than his late acting career. He gained a great deal of weight in the 1960s and by the mid-1990s he weighed over 300 lbs. (136 kg) and suffered from diabetes. He had a history of weight fluctuations through his career which, by and large, he attributed to his years of stress-related overeating followed by compensatory dieting. He also earned a reputation for being difficult on the set, often unwilling or unable to memorize his lines and less interested in taking direction than in confronting the film director with odd demands.

He also dabbled with some innovation in his last years. He had several patents issued in his name from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, all of which involve a method of tensioning drum heads, in June 2002–November 2004. (For example, see U.S. Patent 6,812,392 and its equivalents).

In 2004, Brando recorded for the character Mrs. Sour in the unreleased animated film Big Bug Man.

The actor was a longtime close friend of entertainer Michael Jackson and paid regular visits to his Neverland Ranch, resting there for weeks at a time. Brando also participated in the singer's two-day solo career 30th-anniversary celebration concerts in 2001, and starred in his 13-minute-long music video, "You Rock My World," in the same year. On Jackson's 30th anniversary concert, Brando gave a rambling speech to the audience on humanitarian work which received a poor reaction and was unaired.

The actor's son, Miko, was Jackson's bodyguard and assistant for several years, and was a friend of the singer. He stated, "The last time my father left his house to go anywhere, to spend any kind of time ... was with Michael Jackson. He loved it ... He had a 24-hour chef, 24-hour security, 24-hour help, 24-hour kitchen, 24-hour maid service."[44] "Michael was instrumental helping my father through the last few years of his life. For that I will always be indebted to him. Dad had a hard time breathing in his final days, and he was on oxygen much of the time. He loved the outdoors, so Michael would invite him over to Neverland. Dad could name all the trees there, and the flowers, but being on oxygen it was hard for him to get around and see them all, it's such a big place. So Michael got Dad a golf cart with a portable oxygen tank so he could go around and enjoy Neverland. They'd just drive around—Michael Jackson, Marlon Brando, with an oxygen tank in a golf cart."[45]

In 2004, Brando signed with Tunisian film director Ridha Behi and began pre-production on a project to be titled Brando and Brando. Up to a week before his death, he was working on the script in anticipation of a July/August 2004 start date.[47] Production was suspended in July 2004 following Brando's death, at which time Behi stated that he would continue the film as an homage to Brando,[48] with a new title of Citizen Brando.[49][50]

Karl Malden, Brando's fellow actor in A Streetcar Named Desire, On The Waterfront, and One-Eyed Jacks (the only film directed by Brando), talks in a documentary accompanying the DVD of A Streetcar Named Desire about a phone call he received from Brando shortly before Brando's death. A distressed Brando told Malden he kept falling over. Malden wanted to come over, but Brando put him off, telling him there was no point. Three weeks later, Brando was dead. Shortly before his death, he had apparently refused permission for tubes carrying oxygen to be inserted into his lungs, which, he was told, was the only way to prolong his life.

Marlon Brando was known for his tumultuous personal life and his large number of wives, girlfriends and children. He was the father to sixteen known children, three of whom were adopted. Some sources claim he fathered as many as 17 children or more.[57]

In Songs My Mother Taught Me, Brando claimed he met Marilyn Monroe at a party where she played piano, unnoticed by anybody else there, and they had an affair and maintained an intermittent relationship for many years, receiving a telephone call from her several days before she died. He also claimed numerous other romances, although he did not discuss his marriages, his wives, or his children in his autobiography. As a young man he was a family friend of Stella Adler's, whose daughter Ellen was a roommate of novelist Paula Fox. For a while, Brando and Fox lived under one roof and became close. Brando may have been the father of Fox' first child, daughter Linda Carroll who was born in 1944. Linda was given up for adoption and is the mother of Courtney Love. Fox never named the child's father or addressed the affair.[58]

Brando married actress Anna Kashfi in 1957. Kashfi was born in Calcutta and moved to Wales from India in 1947. She is said to have been the daughter of a Welsh steel worker of Irish descent, William O'Callaghan, who had been superintendent on the Indian State railways. However, in her book, Brando for Breakfast, she claimed that she really is half Indian and that the press incorrectly thought that her stepfather, O'Callaghan, was her real father. She said her real father was Indian and that she was the result of an "unregistered alliance" between her parents. Brando and Kashfi had a son, Christian Brando, on May 11, 1958; they divorced in 1959.

In 1960, Brando married Movita Castaneda, a Mexican-American actress seven years his senior; they were divorced in 1962. Castaneda had appeared in the first Mutiny on the Bounty film in 1935, some 27 years before the 1962 remake with Brando as Fletcher Christian. They had two children together: Miko Castaneda Brando (born 1961) and Rebecca Brando (born 1966).

Tahitian actress Tarita Teriipaia, who played his love interest in Mutiny on the Bounty, became Brando's third wife on August 10, 1962. She was 20 years old, 18 years younger than Brando, who was reportedly delighted by her naiveté.[59] Because Teriipia was a native French speaker, Brando became fluent in the language and gave numerous interviews in French.[60][61] Teriipia became the mother of two of his children: Simon Teihotu Brando (born 1963) and Tarita Cheyenne Brando (born 1970). Brando also adopted Teriipia's daughter, Maimiti Brando (born 1977) and niece, Raiatua Brando (born 1982). Brando and Teriipia divorced in July 1972.

Brando had a long-term relationship with his housekeeper Maria Christina Ruiz, by whom he had three children: Ninna Priscilla Brando (born May 13, 1989), Myles Jonathan Brando (born January 16, 1992), and Timothy Gahan Brando (born January 6, 1994). He had five more children by unidentified women: Stephen Blackehart (born 1967),[62][63] Michael Gilman[64] (born 1967), who was adopted by Brando's longtime friend Sam Gilman, and Dylan Brando (1968–1988), Angelique Brando. Brando also adopted Petra Brando-Corval (born 1972), the daughter of his assistant Caroline Barrett and novelist James Clavell.[65][66]

Brando's grandson Tuki Brando (born 1990), son of Cheyenne Brando, is a medical professional and a fashion model. His numerous grandchildren also include Michael Brando (born 1988), son of Christian Brando, Prudence Brando and Shane Brando, children of Miko C. Brando, the three children of Teihotu Brando and the children of Michael Gilman,[67] among others.[68]

Death of Dag Drollet

In May 1990, Dag Drollet, the Tahitian lover of Brando's daughter Cheyenne, died of a gunshot wound after a confrontation with Cheyenne's half-brother Christian at the family's hilltop home above Beverly Hills. Christian, then 31 years old, claimed he was drunk and the shooting was accidental. After heavily publicized pre-trial proceedings, Christian pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and use of a gun. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Before the sentence, Brando delivered an hour of testimony, in which he said he and his former wife had failed Christian. He commented softly to members of the Drollet family: "I'm sorry ... If I could trade places with Dag, I would. I'm prepared for the consequences." Afterward, Drollet's father, Jacques, said he thought Brando was acting and his son was "getting away with murder." The tragedy was compounded in 1995, when Cheyenne, suffering from lingering effects of a serious car accident and said to still be depressed over Drollet's death, committed suicide by hanging herself in Tahiti. Christian Brando died of pneumonia at age 49 on January 26, 2008.

Lifestyle

Brando earned a "bad boy" reputation for his public outbursts and antics. According to Los Angeles magazine, "Brando was rock and roll before anybody knew what rock and roll was".[69] His behavior during the filming of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) seemed to bolster his reputation as a difficult star. He was blamed for a change in director and a runaway budget, though he disclaimed responsibility for either. On June 12, 1973, Brando broke paparazzoRon Galella's jaw. Galella had followed Brando, who was accompanied by talk show host Dick Cavett, after a taping of The Dick Cavett Show in New York City. He reportedly paid a $40,000 out-of-court settlement and suffered an infected hand as a result. Galella wore a football helmet the next time he photographed Brando at a gala benefiting the American Indians Development Association.

Brando made the following comment about his sex life in an interview with Gary Carey, for his 1976 biography The Only Contender, "Homosexuality is so much in fashion it no longer makes news. Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences and I am not ashamed. I have never paid much attention to what people think about me. But if there is someone who is convinced that Jack Nicholson and I are lovers, may they continue to do so. I find it amusing."[70]

The filming of Mutiny on the Bounty affected Brando's life in a profound way, as he fell in love with Tahiti and its people. He bought a 12-island atoll, Tetiaroa, and in 1970 hired an award-winning young Los Angeles architect Bernard Judge to build his home and natural village there without despoiling the environment. An environmental laboratory protecting sea birds and turtles was established and student groups welcomed there for many years. Tragically, the 1983 hurricane destroyed many of the structures including his resort. A hotel using Brando's name is currently under reconstruction under new ownership due to open in 2014.[71] His son Simon is the only inhabitant of Tetiaroa. Brando was an active ham radio operator, with the call signs KE6PZH and FO5GJ (the latter from his island). He was listed in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) records as Martin Brandeaux to preserve his privacy.[72][73]

In the A&E Biography episode on Brando, biographer Peter Manso comments, "On the one hand, being a celebrity allowed Marlon to take his revenge on the world that had so deeply hurt him, so deeply scarred him. On the other hand he hated it because he knew it was false and ephemeral." In the same program biographer David Thomson relates, "Many, many people who worked with him, and came to work with him with the best intentions, went away in despair saying he's a spoiled kid. It has to be done his way or he goes away with some vast story about how he was wronged, he was offended, and I think that fits with the psychological pattern that he was a wronged kid."

In the aftermath of the 1968 assassination of Mayor Lindsay. And there were snipers and there was a lot of unrest and he kept walking and talking through those neighborhoods with Mayor Lindsay. It was one of the most incredible acts of courage I ever saw, and it meant a lot and did a lot."

Brando's participation in the African-American civil rights movement actually began well before King's death. In the early 1960s, he contributed thousands of dollars to both the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C.) and to a scholarship fund established for the children of slain MississippiN.A.A.C.P. leader Medgar Evers. By this time, Brando was already involved in films that carried messages about human rights: Sayonara, which addressed interracial romance, and The Ugly American, depicting the conduct of U.S. officials abroad and the deleterious effect on the citizens of foreign countries. For a time, he was also donating money to the Black Panther Party and considered himself a friend of founder Bobby Seale.[75] Brando ended his financial support for the group over his perception of its increasing radicalization, specifically a passage in a Panther pamphlet put out by Eldridge Cleaver advocating indiscriminate violence, "for the Revolution."

At the 1973 Academy Awards ceremony, Brando refused to accept the Oscar for his performance in The Godfather. Sacheen Littlefeather represented him at the ceremony. She appeared in full Apache attire and stated that owing to the "poor treatment of Native Americans in the film industry", Brando would not accept the award.[76] At this time, the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee occurred, causing rising tensions between the government and Native American activists. The event grabbed the attention of the US and the world media. This was considered a major event and victory for the movement by its supporters and participants.

Outside of his film work, Brando appeared before the California Assembly in support of a fair housing law and personally joined picket lines in demonstrations protesting discrimination in housing developments.

He was also an activist against apartheid.[77] In 1964 he favored a boycott of his films in South Africa to prevent them from being shown to a segregated audience. He took part at a 1975 protest rally against American investments in South Africa and for the release of Nelson Mandela.[78] In 1989 Brando also starred in the film A Dry White Season, based upon André Brink's novel of the same name.

Comments on Jews, Hollywood and Israel

In an interview in Playboy magazine in January 1979, Brando said: "You've seen every single race besmirched, but you never saw an image of the kike because the Jews were ever so watchful for that—and rightly so. They never allowed it to be shown on screen. The Jews have done so much for the world that, I suppose, you get extra disappointed because they didn't pay attention to that."[79]

Brando made a similar comment on Larry King Live in April 1996, saying "Hollywood is run by Jews; it is owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of—of people who are suffering. Because they've exploited—we have seen the—we have seen the Nigger and Greaseball, we've seen the Chink, we've seen the slit-eyed dangerous Jap, we have seen the wily Filipino, we've seen everything but we never saw the Kike. Because they knew perfectly well, that that is where you draw the wagons around." Larry King, who is Jewish, replied, "When you say—when you say something like that you are playing right in, though, to anti-Semitic people who say the Jews are—" at which point Brando interrupted. "No, no, because I will be the first one who will appraise the Jews honestly and say 'Thank God for the Jews'."[80]

Jay Kanter, Brando's agent, producer and friend defended him in Daily Variety: "Marlon has spoken to me for hours about his fondness for the Jewish people, and he is a well-known supporter of Israel."[81] Similarly, Louie Kemp, in his article for Jewish Journal, wrote: "You might remember him as Don Vito Corleone, Stanley Kowalski or the eerie Col. Walter E. Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now," but I remember Marlon Brando as a mensch and a personal friend of the Jewish people when they needed it most."[18] In an interview with NBC Today one day after Brando's death, King also defended Brando's comments, saying that they were blown out of proportion and taken out of context. In the 1940s Brando had donated money to the Irgun, a Zionist political-paramilitary group. In his later years, however, he became a vocal critic of Israel and a supporter of the Palestinian cause.[82][83]

"That will be Brando's legacy whether he likes it or not—the stunning actor who embodied a poetry of anxiety that touched the deepest dynamics of his time and place."

Legacy

Tributes and homages

Brando is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential actors of the 20th century.[84] He has earned great respect among critics and theater experts for his memorable performances and charismatic screen presence.[85] In the book Movies in American History: An Encyclopedia, James Delmont wrote: "Marlon Brando was arguably the finest screen actor of the twentieth century, winning worldwide acceptance as both a movie star of the first rank and as a performer of uncommon skill."[6] Film scholar Richard Schickel, while examining his charismatic screen presence and acting ability, argued: "As a movie actor he [Brando] has no peer in this generation. That he consistently underplays, yet still packs more emotion into a scene than anyone else, is a sign of a charisma that may be an act of God."[86] Similarly, Roger Ebert, writing of his iconic performance in Last Tango in Paris, said: "This was the greatest movie actor of his time, the author of performances that do honor to the cinema."[87]

Tennessee Williams, among the many who acknowledged his finesse, described Brando as "the greatest living actor ever ... greater than [Laurence] Olivier."[88] Laurence Olivier himself said: "Brando acted with an empathy and an instinctual understanding that not even the greatest technical performers could possibly match."[86]Johnny Depp credits Brando with changing the way actors work, stating that "Marlon reinvented acting, he revolutionized acting."[89] Depp also said he was "probably the most important actor—just speaking in terms of him as an actor—of the past two centuries".[90] In a 2007 Best Life article, praising his performance in On the Waterfront, Rob Reiner wrote: "Marlon Brando gives the single greatest performance ever. It's just so natural, powerful, real, and honest."[91]

Cultural influence

"The art of screen acting has two chapters-"Before Brando" and "After Brando." Though Stanislavski created "method acting," it was Brando who showed the world its power."

Marlon Brando is a cultural icon whose popularity has endured for over six decades. His rise to national attention in the 1950s had a profound effect on the motion picture industry and influenced the broader scope of American culture.[92] Director Martin Scorsese said of him, "He is the marker. There's 'before Brando' and 'after Brando'."[93] Actor Jack Nicholson once said, "When Marlon dies, everybody moves up one."[94]

According to film critic Pauline Kael, "[Marlon] Brando represented a reaction against the post-war mania for security. As a protagonist, the Brando of the early fifties had no code, only his instincts. He was a development from the gangster leader and the outlaw. He was antisocial because he knew society was crap; he was a hero to youth because he was strong enough not to take the crap ... Brando represented a contemporary version of the free American ... Brando is still the most exciting American actor on the screen."[92] Sociologist Dr. Suzanne Mcdonald-Walker states: "Marlon Brando, sporting leather jacket, jeans, and moody glare, became a cultural icon summing up 'the road' in all its maverick glory."[95] His portrayal of the gang leader Johnny Strabler inThe Wild One has become an iconic image, used both as a symbol of rebelliousness and a fashion accessory that includes a Perfecto style motorcycle jacket, a tilted cap, jeans and sunglasses. Johnny's haircut inspired a craze for sideburns, followed by James Dean and Elvis Presley, among others.[84] Dean copied Brando's acting style extensively and Presley used Brando's image as a model for his role in Jailhouse Rock.[96] The "I coulda been a contenda" scene from On the Waterfront, according to the author ofBrooklyn Boomer, Martin H. Levinson, is "one of the most famous scenes in motion picture history and the line itself has become part of America's cultural lexicon."[84] Brando's powerful 'Wild One' image was still, as of 2011, being marketed by the makers of his Triumph Thunderbird motorcycle, in a range of clothing inspired by his character from the film and licenced by Brando's estate.[97]

Brando was also considered a sex symbol, one of the earliest in the film industry to achieve widespread attention, due to his enigmatic and sexy persona and reports of his dalliances and relationships with various major Hollywood celebrities. Film scholar Linda Williams writes: "Marlon Brando [was] the quintessential American male sex symbol of the late fifties and early sixties".[98]

Brando was one of the first actor-activists to march for civil and Native American rights.

Financial legacy

Upon his death in 2004, Brando left an estate valued at $21.6 million.[99] Brando's estate still earns about $9 million a year, according to Forbes. He was named one of the top-earning dead celebrities in the world by the magazine.[100]

^Pierpont writes that John Garfield was first choice for the role, but "made impossible demands." It was Elia Kazan's decision to fall back on the far less experienced (and technically too young for the role) Brando.

^James Cusick (1994-06-27). "Opponents of apartheid decide their job is done: The Anti-Apartheid Movement has agreed to disband. James Cusick looks back at its victorious 35-year political struggle - UK - News". The Independent. Retrieved 2014-07-16.

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